Officials deny shot soldier was victim of family feud

Sep 29, 2011, 2:49 GMT

Wellington - The chief of New Zealand's Defence Force denied Thursday that one of his special forces soldiers shot dead in Afghanistan was victim of a local family feud and said that he died fighting insurgents.

Lieutenant General Rhys Jones insisted that Lance Corporal Leon Smith was shot Wednesday during a combined New Zealand-Afghan operation to arrest suspected Taliban suicide bombers who were planning an attack on the capital Kabul.

He said Smith had climbed a ladder to see into a compound in Wardak province, south-west of Kabul, that was being surrounded by a team from his Special Air Service (SAS) unit supporting the Afghan Crisis Response Unit and became involved in an exchange of fire with an insurgent.

Jones said Smith suffered fatal wounds when he was hit in the head and the insurgent, who was identified as 'a person of interest' in an arrest warrant, also died. Another insurgent was arrested.

He said the operation had been planned over several days in response to information that the compound was housing a suicide bomber.

Earlier, Bette Dam, a freelance Dutch journalist based in Kabul, told Radio New Zealand that Afghan authorities had told her the soldiers may have been caught up in a family feud and the people in the house being targeted were unarmed.

She was told that a rival family had given false information that the house was occupied by Taliban bomb-makers, she said. The governor of Wardak told her an Afghan man who was also killed and nine others who were injured in the firefight were innocent.

Smith was the second SAS soldier killed in Afghanistan in five weeks. Corporal Doug Grant was shot dead in August when attempting to free hostages at the British Council cultural centre in Kabul.

Leaders of two political parties supporting the centre-right government said Thursday that the SAS unit of nearly 40 men should be brought home, but Prime Minister John Key said they would remain until March as scheduled.